UK Academy of Medicine

Pocket profile:

An idea as old as the NHS, a kind of superlobby that can 'speak for the whole of medicine in the widest sense'. The latest attempt to set up an academy was launched in June 1996, when it was noted there was a plethora of bodies speaking on medicine, and that the situation was 'one of Byzantine complexity'.

What will it do?

Bring together the views of 'the communities within academic medicine' in the UK in order to 'become an authoritative body capable of addressing and advising on scientific and wider issues of public concern related to medicine'.

Why is it needed?

Because 'some of the changes in higher education and in the NHS have weakened the influence of academic medicine in the country', and healthcare changes are putting 'new pressures' on the healthcare-related professions.

So it's a kind of high-class lobby machine protecting the entrenched interests of the bourgeois medico-scientific establishment?

Or a happy band of freedom fighters defending academic and scientific integrity from the corrupting influence of the post-Thatcherite managerialist philistines in the NHS, universities and the Treasury.

Isn't that what the BMA does?

'The BMA would need to be kept aware from the outset of the niche the new academy of medicine will occupy and be reassured that the academy's role would not conflict with or detract from its own,' says last year's working group report.

Who's promoting it?

The academy working party has been chaired by the ubiquitous Sir Leslie Turnberg, chair of the government's London healthcare review, along with Peter Lachmann, professor of immunology at Cambridge University.

After all this time, is it going to happen?

It's due to be launched today at its plush HQ in Carlton House Terrace as the Academy of Medical Sciences.